Melancholy must have been the spectacle in this cavern of justice, through whose eastern windows glanced the sunbeams as into some mausoleum, when the Chief Justice, a man of frail and attenuated frame, read to a large audience of the bar, in a low tone of voice almost inaudible, the majority opinion prepared by himself. Elaborate, adroitly put together and cruel, it doomed the African of this age by the standard of three centuries ago, - exploring musty and worm-eaten codes, and announcing far too broadly that, at the date our Federal Constitution was adopted, negroes had been and were still regarded as beings of an inferior order, "and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." That curdling phrase was not forgotten; and, though Taney uttered it merely as an historical conclusion, our people believed it to express the real sentiment entertained by himself and his Southern colleagues on the bench towards the oppressed; and in that sense they interpreted it. Taney had many admirable traits of character, being learned in the law, painstaking, upright, and full of dignity; that he could take odium unflinchingly he had shown when, as Jackson's secretary he removed the deposits. But he was wanting in the flow of healthy blood, and henceforth to a large fraction of Americans he seemed almost a vampire, hovering in the dim twilight. Not difficult was it to rake together a heap of rubbish testimony from colonial acts, the writings of European publicists, and the statute-books moreover of our original thirteen States. But where was the clear letter of the Constitution that set an eternal doom upon the inheritors of an Ethiopian skin? For Indians, it was admitted, the red race, were placed in no such unfortunate category. Where was the rising sun of the American revolution, to dissipate this festering mass of misconception? Where were the hopes, the wishes, cherished by Franklin, by Washington, by Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, and all the chief framers and expounders of our perfected Federal system, under whose benign influence freedom was carried into new territories?

JAMES SCHOULER, History of the United States. V. 378-380.

RHODES (1893)

The opinion of Taney was but the doctrine of Calhoun, announced for the first time in 1847, and now embodied in a judicial decision. . . Only by the conviction that slavery was being pushed to the wall, in conjunction with subtle reasoning like that of Calhoun, who tried to obstruct the onward march of the century by a fine-spun theory, could a sentiment have been created which found expression in this opinion of Taney, outraging as it did precedent, history, and justice.

That Taney committed a grievous fault is certain. He is not to be blamed for embracing the political notions of John C. Calhoun; his environment gave that shape to his thoughts; but he does deserve censure because he allowed himself to make a political argument, when only a judicial decision was called for. . . . Nothing but an imperative need should have led judges, by their training and position presumably conservative, to unsettle a question that had so long been acquiesced in. The strength of a constitutional government lies in the respect paid to settled questions. . . .

If Taney spoke for Calhoun, Curtis spoke for Webster... If Taney furnished arguments for the Democrats, Curtis showed that the aim of the Republicans was constitutional.

Justice Curtis rose to the height of the situation, and in his opinion gave the key-note to the constitutional argument against the opinion of the court being in any way binding on the political consciences of the people.

Not Republicans alone saw the matter in this light under the guidance of so earnest and able a jurist.

JAMES FORD RHODES, History of the United States. II. 260-263.

BRYCE (1896)

Whenever the Constitution has conferred a power of legislating upon Congress, the Court declines to inquire whether the use of the power was in the case of a particular statute passed by Congress either necessary or desirable, or whether it was exerted in a prudent manner, for it holds all such matters to be within the exclusive province of Congress.

...

Adherence to this principle has enabled the Court to avoid

an immixture in political strife which must have destroyed its credit, has deterred it from entering the political arena, where it could have been weak, and enabled it to act without fear in the sphere of pure law, where it is strong. . . . Occasionally, however, it has been required to give decisions which have worked with tremendous force on politics. The most famous of these was the Dred Scott case, in which the Supreme Court, on an action by a negro for assault and battery against the person claiming to be his master, declared that a slave taken temporarily to a free State and to a Territory in which Congress had forbidden slavery, and afterwards returning into a slave State and resuming residence there, was not a citizen capable of suing in the Federal courts if by the laws of the slave State he was still a slave. This was the point which actually called for a decision; but the majority of the court, for there was a dissentient minority, went further, and delivered a variety of dicta on various other points touching the legal status of negroes, and the constitutional view of slavery.

JAMES BRYCE, American Commonwealth.1 189, 190. Copyright, 1896, by the Macmillan Co.

CHAPTER XXII

EMANCIPATION OF THE SLAVES (1862-1863)

SUGGESTIONS

IN Barrett's biography of Abraham Lincoln, it is stated that the first rough draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was written on board ship as the President was returning from his visit to the army at Harrison's Landing, the 8th of July. The original official draft is dated September 22nd, 1862, and was presented to the Army Relief Bazaar at Albany, N. Y., in 1864. It is in the handwriting of President Lincoln, excepting two interlineations in pencil, by Secretary Seward, and the formal heading and ending, which were written by the chief clerk of the State Department. The final Proclamation was signed on New Year's Day, 1863.

These documents demand close study: the preliminary proclamation has a background of military as well as political history, which is of the greatest importance; and in the study of the final document the student should take into consideration the story of Lincoln's life; the anecdotes and incidents grouping themselves around the abolitionists of the North; the home life upon the Southern plantation; the long struggle between the two great parties in Congress, problems which preceded the Proclamation of 1863.

For Outlines and Material, see Appendix B.

Text taken from Abra

ham Lincoln,

DOCUMENTS

Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation

September 22, 1862.

I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States of America, and commander-in-chief of the Complete army and navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and deWorks, ii. 237. clare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be Note that prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the States, and the people thereof, in

Lincoln was

the head of the Army

which States that relation is or may be suspended or according to disturbed.

Const. Art. ii. sec. ii. This procla

until after

President

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a mation was practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the kept back free acceptance or rejection of all slave States so the victory called, the people whereof may not then be in rebel- at Antietam. lion against the United States, and which States Lincoln had may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter vowed to may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; promise to and that the effort to colonize persons of Afri- issue such a proclamation can descent, with their consent, upon this conti- if the "rebel nent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained army consent of the governments existing there, be continued.

himself to

fulfil the

99 were driven out.

will In December

year of

the House

passed a resolution to

President's

policy.

That on the first day of January, in the our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- approve the three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

tion.

That the Executive will, on the first day of January See Final aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States Proclamaand parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against No such conthe United States; and the fact that any State, or

the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith

dition was brought about between Sept.

represented in the Congress of the United States, by 22, 1862, and members chosen thereto at elections wherein a ma- Jan. 1, 1863. jority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence